


you've set it running free

by brophigenia



Series: Pynch Week 2018 [4]
Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, Hades and Persephone AU, Kidnapping, M/M, Pynch Week 2018, Pynch Week 2018 Day 4: Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-28
Updated: 2018-07-28
Packaged: 2019-06-17 10:29:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15459354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: The problem is that Ronan isn’t exactly what you think of, when you thinkgod of springtime.(AKA, Ronan is Persephone and Adam is Hades and it goes just about as well as you'd think.)





	you've set it running free

**Author's Note:**

> So this is two days late but I've done 21 hours of babysitting in the last two days and I am EXHAUSTED. It's not what I wanted it to be but y'know. Whatever. Have at thee.

The problem is that Ronan isn’t exactly what you think of, when you think  _ god of springtime.  _ No, that title should belong to someone like Matthew, with his golden curls and healthy, cherubic cheeks. Hell, even  _ Declan _ would be a better fit for the role.  _ Ronan _ should be the god of wintertime, and Declan can be the god of springtime, and everyone would be much happier. Much better suited. 

Or, they would be, except for how Ronan  _ loves springtime.  _ He loves all the wobbling baby animals, the soft-wooled lambs and the knock-kneed fawns, the smell of the freshly-grown grass and the  _ life  _ everywhere. 

He loves all of it, but he knows he does not live up to his role, his name, his reputation. 

Some days it’s easy to forget the chafing he feels, existing to be a disappointment; he lays among the flowers and lets the vines twine around him, the petals stroke his cheeks. He attends countless births, watching young new animals be brought into the world with satisfaction. He endures meetings on Olympus with his brothers, standing silently behind his mother and trying not to catch anyone’s eye. If they can’t see his frustration, his rage, then they won’t know it exists. It won’t be another thing they can throw at his mom, another supposed failure. Bad enough that they’re Niall’s children; he doesn’t need to shame her by not even being able to do his fucking  _ job.  _

Other days, the chafing is  _ all  _ he can think about. 

He and Declan have a stupid fucking fight. It’s  _ stupid,  _ and he doesn’t give a  _ fuck  _ what Declan thinks, just. Declan has the power to cut him right to the fucking bone, down to his  _ marrow.  _

He decides to go to a far-flung meadow, somewhere where he can’t hear the echoes of Declan’s words even if he strains his ears. He’s near the ocean.  _ That,  _ he can hear. 

There are hyacinths everywhere. 

He lies down on the ground and presses his face to the grass, the soil, nuzzling into it the way a bear cub might nuzzle its mother’s underbelly. “I’m so fucking sick of not being good enough.” He whispers, a secret just for the earth. “I’m tired of feeling alone.” It unburdens him, ridiculously, as if he’s actually talking to  _ someone.  _ “Why can’t they just accept me for who I am?” 

And then the world  _ shatters,  _ the grass opening with a horrible ripping sound, the hyacinths turning to dust. 

Out of the fissure comes a man. No, a  _ god.  _ Out of the fissure comes a  _ god  _ on a chariot, with two great black stallions. Their eyes are like  _ fire.  _ They are  _ nothing _ like the foals he has pulled from laboring mares. 

They toss their heads and rear and Ronan is  _ sure _ he will be crushed beneath their hooves that glint like obsidian. He closes his eyes and waits for the impact, but it never comes. Instead there is the god’s arm wrapping around his waist, and he has no time to even scream before the entire rig is being turned and they’re  _ descending.  _

Down. They go  _ down.  _

Ronan shudders, torn from his sunlight and flowers, and then blacks out. 

 

***

 

Ronan wakes in a room so dark that for a moment he’s sure he can’t even see his hand in front of his face. There is no night for him; he has never seen it, has always cantered from place to place, outrunning the moon. He is sure that this must be blackest midnight, until his eyes grudgingly adjust and he realizes that he is only in a room, a candlelit room. 

It is a novelty, one that he does not enjoy. 

“Have you woken?” The voice is soft, hushed. Gentle, faded. It belongs to a pale youth in a black chiton standing on the far wall. He’s handsome, but not the way Ronan knows of beauty. His examples have all been healthy and flushed and golden. This boy has pale hair— pale  _ everything,  _ and shadowy eyes, thin as a reed. 

“Who are you?” Ronan asks, scrambling upright. “Why have you brought me here?” 

The pale boy laughs, startled. Bold for a human. “Adam brought you, not me. He told me to wait for you to wake.” 

_ Adam.  _ Ronan has heard that name. Heard it whispered far away from his hearing, and rightly so; he is a god of  _ life,  _ not  _ death.  _ Not like  _ Adam.  _

“Am I,” he begins, and then swallows thickly. “Have I died?” 

The pale boy laughs again. It makes Ronan bristle. “No, my lord. You’re here as a… guest.” 

Well fuck that. “Take me to him.” Ronan demands, full of fury. “And give me your name. I won’t ask again.” 

“I’m Noah,” Noah says. “And he said to keep you here til after Court.” 

“The  _ hell  _ with what he said.  _ Now.”  _ Ronan snarls. He will not be kidnapped to the underworld and then  _ ignored.  _ Made to  _ wait.  _ He is Ronan, god of springtime. He will not  _ wait  _ for his  _ abductor  _ to acknowledge him. 

Noah leads him along through winding corridors, slipping past moaning shades and inquisitive-looking old demons trying to get a word in with him. 

The throne room is even larger than the one at Olympus, and Ronan’s eyes have adjusted enough to pick out the intricately carved reliefs on the dark walls. Bodies writhing in pain, tortured, and he has to look away, sickened by it. 

Adam sits upon a throne made of obsidian shards, its back as tall as four grown mortals. He looks no smaller for its height, all of him gaunt and fine-featured.  _ Handsome,  _ Ronan’s traitorous heart murmurs. He batters it back furiously. 

Spirits and shades wait in a long winding line before the throne, wait to be heard, but Ronan will not wait for them. He strides forward, head held high. He is Aurora’s son and he is Niall’s son and he is a prince in his own damn right; he will not  _ tolerate  _ this. 

When he stands properly before Adam, though, he is struck dumb. Up close the god is even more terribly well-wrought, ferocious-eyed and square-jawed and rawboned. 

(Ronan has never been good at ignoring loveliness, whether flowers or newly-hatched cobras.) 

Adam  _ waits,  _ expression neutral. He  _ waits,  _ as if the burden is upon  _ Ronan  _ to speak. To explain. To  _ justify  _ this  _ abduction. _

_ Fuck  _ that. “You will let me go.” He demands, glowering, every inch a god. He may be wrought of springtime and newness, but he is a  _ god,  _ and his connection to the earth does not stop six inches beneath the topsoil. This is Adam’s domain, his kingdom, but the roots in the ceiling still want to obey  _ Ronan.  _

Adam considers him, almost  _ amused.  _ It is  _ infuriating.  _ Ronan is  _ infuriated.  _

(Ronan is horribly,  _ horribly  _ turned on, but he cannot think of that right now.) 

“I will not.” Adam says, nearly bored. “You are my prize. I stole you. Your place is at my side.” 

_ What.  _ Ronan stares, gaping. The shades behind him have fallen absolutely silent. “I am not some freckle-faced  _ nymph,  _ you absolute psychopath!” He bellows. “I am  _ Ronan,  _ son of Aurora, and I will not stand for this!” 

Adam’s teeth are sharp when he bares them in a grin. It is not a nice expression. “I am your captor and I am invoking the rights owed to me by the Old Ways. A year you’ll stay with me, and then I will hear negotiations for your release.” It is said in a way that rings of finality, a vow that binds them both. 

Ronan is a god, but even he is bound to obey the Old Ways. His shoulders slump. “Fine.” He says, defeated. “What will you have of me,  _ my lord?”  _ It’s almost sneered, not at all deferential, despite the honorific.

“You have experience at Court, yes? You’ll sit with me and assist me in my duties.” Adam waves a casual hand and another throne springs up, smaller and less intimidating than his jagged peak of a perch, on the dais beside his own. 

Ronan stares at it for a long moment. He knows, despite never having been in the situation before, that kidnappers don’t usually  _ deputize _ their kidnappees. 

“O...kay.” He says finally, when Adam clears his throat impatiently, and then takes his place at Adam’s side. It’s surely better than scrubbing floors and sucking cock, but that doesn’t make it any less bizarre. 

 

***

 

If you eat the food of the Underworld you can never leave. 

Ronan knows this. It’s only about the first thing a child learns, right after  _ don’t hang around the satyrs  _ and  _ don’t turn your scorned lovers into plants.  _

He  _ knows,  _ but after that long first day of hearing plight after plight from shade after shade, the fruits and meats arrayed over the massive table in the Feast Hall makes his mouth water. 

Adam, still an enigma despite the coolheaded and compassionate way he’d dealt with all of his subjects’ problems, smirks at him from the head of the table. 

“Hungry?” He asks, very nearly a taunt. Ronan rolls his eyes. 

“Does wine count as food?” He asks, eyeing the corked bottles wistfully. 

 

***

 

The bedroom is cavernous and dark, even with candles lit on every flat surface. 

The  _ bed  _ is large. It looks  _ comfortable.  _ Terribly so, even, and Ronan’s gut twists in a not entirely unpleasant way when he realizes that it’s sheeted in  _ silk.  _ Sumptuous black silk. 

Adam strips off his chiton and cloak, walks bare-skinned and unselfconscious to the bed and stretches out upon it. His skin looks smoother than the silk, and Ronan is, as he’s been for what feels like  _ hours,  _ hard beneath his short peplos. 

“You’re my captor,” he says, slowly. Considering the weight of each word on his tongue. It’s the truth. Adam has taken him. Strangely, or perhaps not, he’s not  _ afraid  _ of Adam, though. Despite the fact that he’s sure Adam could do terrible things to him, he’s just as sure that Adam  _ won’t  _ do those things. Adam’s eyes smolder at him from where he’s sprawled out, lean as a jungle cat. 

The shoulders of his garment are fastened by a pair of golden brooches. Gifts from Declan, actually, after a fight. Fashioned to match Ronan’s favorite belt, all of it done up to look like raven skulls. A bit macabre for a god of springtime, but the belt had been a gift from Niall, and Declan had their father’s wry sense of humor. 

Ronan undoes the clasp of his belt, first, laying it aside with gentle hands so as not to scuff or chip the delicately-molded skulls. 

“I am.” Adam says, evenly, but Ronan can  _ see _ the fine quivering of his limbs. He wonders how long it’s been since Adam had someone in this bed— someone  _ alive  _ and  _ warm.  _

Ronan is  _ alive.  _ Ronan is  _ warm.  _

Ronan is trapped here for a year, and he could spend the year in fearful dread, counting the days until the gates opened and he could be free. 

Ronan is trapped here for a year, and nothing will change that. 

So why shouldn’t he do whatever the hell he wants? Aboveground he had to be so  _ careful—  _ everyone wanted the favor of one of Aurora’s children, and Ronan has never wanted to be some mortal’s conquest. 

Adam is not some thrillseeking favor-hounding mortal. 

“Spoils of war, huh?” He asks, and holds his breath so it doesn’t hitch as he quickly undoes both of his brooches at once. 

The fabric of his garment falls to the ground and he is  _ exposed,  _ all of him naked and new to Adam’s eye. 

_ “Ronan.”  _ Adam groans, but holds himself  _ so still.  _ Lets Ronan come to  _ him,  _ like he’s trying to be  _ good.  _

(An ethical marauder. Who would’ve thought?)

Ronan’s grateful for his restraint, though, because it makes it easier for his bravado to carry him towards the bed. Easier for him to prowl up the sheets like a predator, like he’s the one with all the power here. 

All of his bare flesh presses to Adam’s and he thought Adam would be cold but he’s  _ not—  _ he’s so  _ hot,  _ and Ronan gasps as he rolls his own hips down, unable to help himself. 

Adam’s mouth is even more searing; Ronan gasps and gasps and doesn’t stop as he’s rolled over, all of him blanketed by the King of the Underworld. By  _ Adam.  _

Ronan opens his thighs, his eyes, looks up at Adam, whose mouth is swollen  _ obscenely.  _

_ “Fuck  _ me,” Ronan groans, surrendering, and Adam laughs, and does. 

 

***

 

It’s an odd thing to settle into so quickly, but days and weeks slip past easily with the new routine. Instead of sprinting from place to place, always beneath the sun’s rays, Ronan finds himself moving at a more sedate pace, usually with Adam but sometimes with Noah, too. 

He learns Noah was once a demigod and a prince, full of potential and joy. Now Noah is Adam’s head of household, organizing the shades and the demons and making sure Adam takes time for himself, away from his duties. He learns that Noah has a wicked, if distracted, sense of humor. Noah doesn’t care that Ronan doesn’t fit the mold of spring-bringer. Noah likes Ronan for Ronan, the way Adam seems to, as well. 

It’s. Good. 

He spends his days in Court with Adam, then goes to the Hall to watch Adam pick restlessly at his food, and then sometimes they walk through the various fields, amongst the shades, in the evenings. 

… other times, they go back to their bedroom and fuck like heat-fevered bucks locking horns in a clearing. 

Ronan would be ashamed of the easy way he fit himself into the role of concubine, but, well… sexual satisfaction, as it turns out, is a powerful ward against self-loathing thoughts. 

(And  _ fuck,  _ is he sexually satisfied.) 

 

***

 

Ronan has sat over a hundred days in council when he first meets Gansey. 

Unlike some of the shades, who are pale and shivery after only a few hours of death, Gansey is so startlingly  _ present  _ that for a moment Ronan is sure he’s  _ alive.  _ He’s rosy-cheeked and red-mouthed and serious-eyed, and he does not look like a dead thing in the least. 

He is, though, or he wouldn’t be here. 

“This is a mistake.” He says, first thing, and his voice is strong, too. Convincing. Honeyed, and well-learnt around the vowels. Ronan has him pegged for royalty even before Noah announces him as  _ Gansey, Prince of Troy. A son of Apollo.  _

A demigod and a prince, and Ronan wonders if he’s imagining the fondness in Noah’s eyes as they skate over the young man. 

“Pardon?” Adam asks, because he doesn’t get that often. Crying, yes. Bargaining, yes. Outraged assertions? Not quite. 

“This is a mistake. A miscarriage of justice, even.” Gansey is so earnest, leaning forward, that Ronan can’t help himself mirroring the stance, wanting to be closer so he can catch every word.

“What do you mean?” He asks, desperate to hear  _ more.  _

“I mean, my dear lords, that I have been snatched from the mortal coil much too quickly, and at a terribly inopportune time! I had just won the heart of my soulmate, and her hand,  _ and  _ my parents’ permission to marry her!” Ronan frowns, convinced already. Gansey is not like the quivering ghosts they always deal with. He is an  _ alive  _ thing, and alive things do not belong down here. Of  _ course  _ he should go back— he is in the prime of his youth. “A bee sting should not be allowed to best me, after the Minotaur failed to do so!” It's a dramatic finish to a dramatic speech, and Ronan looks askance to Adam, waiting. 

Adam does not move, does not speak, does not wave his hands and say  _ yes you’re right, Gansey, go run along back to your life and don’t worry about those bees anymore.  _

“Adam,” Ronan prompts, gesturing. Adam still doesn’t move. 

“I’m sure many of my citizens would also agree that they were too young to die.” Adam says stolidly. “I am sorry for your loss, but I cannot allow you to just walk out of my domain.” 

For the first time, Gansey wavers. His jaw quivers a second before he clenches it tight and nods. 

Ronan  _ rages  _ inside, but does not show it outwardly. There will be time enough for that.  _ Later.  _ Away from prying eyes. 

“I can offer you a position here, as a demigod…” Adam begins, and Ronan perks up, staring defiantly at him. 

“He’ll be mine,” Ronan says, loftily. Daring Adam to contradict; he sees the flash of  _ jealousy  _ in Adam’s eyes. He knows what this looks like. “My man-in-waiting, if you like.” He adds graciously in Gansey’s direction. 

Distrustful-eyed, Gansey nods cautiously, flicking his eyes between Adam and Ronan. Unhappy about getting in between a lovers’ spat, no doubt.

He hasn’t seen  _ anything  _ yet. 

 

***

 

“You should let him go.” Ronan says, low and even, not looking at Adam as he busies himself at the dressing table relegated for his own use. He stares down into the basin of water for washing-up; his reflection is dark-eyed and furious, mouth tight with it. He does not know why he’s been so affected by the prince, but he cannot dispel the anger that rises in him like a full-moon tide. 

Adam sighs, behind him, but absently, like Ronan’s anger isn’t even enough to garner his full attention. Ronan swallows, his throat dry. Always dry, because he cannot eat or drink anything here. And yet he must sit in feasts every single fucking day, at Adam’s whims. Staring at all the juicy morsels of food that he cannot have without compromising himself. 

Because of  _ Adam.  _ Adam, who makes all the decisions, and acts as if Ronan should just lay down and  _ take it.  _ And Ronan had given of himself freely, this is true, but would he ever have been in a position to do so if Adam had not taken him from the meadow he’d lain in? If Adam had let him lay among the hyacinths unmolested, undisturbed? 

He clenches his fists. Does not speak. Does not move except to tense up even further when Adam comes over to carelessly toss down his own brooch in the dish, leaning down to press an absent kiss to the back of Ronan’s shoulder. He does not notice Ronan’s anger, or perhaps he does. Perhaps he sees it and relishes it, another thing he has taken from Ronan. Another thing of Ronan’s he owns. 

Adam  _ does  _ notice when Ronan does not move under his ministrations. 

“Ronan,” he says reproachfully, as if Ronan is a  _ child.  _ Ronan is the  _ spring-bringer.  _ Ronan has been alive since before there was death; Ronan walked amongst the first of the Olympians, fully-formed from his mother’s womb. His mother, the Earth-mother,  _ Aurora.  _ Adam does not know to whom he speaks. Ronan is not the domesticated thing that Adam may wish him to be. Ronan is a wild god. Ronan will not be  _ tamed  _ by a year Underground. 

“Take your fucking hands off me!” He explodes, and flings the basin across the room where it shatters. “You should let him  _ go!”  _ The roots in the walls, beneath the fine furnishings, roil, disturbing the plaster and marble. “He doesn’t  _ belong here!”  _ The paintings fall from the walls, their frames cracking spectacularly. Ronan feels full of murder. Ronan feels full of  _ death.  _

And that was the problem, wasn’t it? Had always  _ been  _ the problem- his anger, the way he knew that he was capable of  _ death  _ too, beneath the life. He shepherded the life, but he could  _ create  _ the death. He’d been a stripling thing, when he’d first killed. In anger, he’d done it, and been left afterward in a hot spring of blood with pulp upon his hands. Declan had been the one to find him, then. To see him for what he was. 

Adam sees him, now. Adam steps back away from him as obedient as anything, watches impassively as Ronan brings destruction upon the fine room that had housed them both for all of this time as they played at  _ partnership.  _ There could be no partnership where both partners were not equal, and no abductee could be their abductor’s  _ equal.  _

“I’m sorry.” Adam murmurs, like it should  _ matter,  _ but- but it  _ does,  _ somehow, and Ronan can feel himself deflating. He’s so  _ hungry.  _ He’s so  _ tired.  _ He’s so fucking  _ sad.  _

“I know you are,” Ronan says, and scrubs at his eyes. The roots still. Ronan doesn’t attempt to apologize, or clean anything up. He slips beneath the covers and lays on his back, staring up at the ceiling. After a couple of moments Adam follows, leaving a great canyon between them. They have not slept this far apart in all the time Ronan has been here. Ronan observes this distantly, and does not move to change it. He does not want Adam’s touch. Not tonight. Not while these things still lie between them, heavy as stones. 

“You shouldn’t have brought me here.” Ronan whispers, just as he falls asleep. 

“I know.” Adam murmurs to his sleeping form, and lays awake the rest of the night counting his sins. 

  
  


***

 

The days pass with Gansey and Noah at his side more quickly than the ones before. Ronan stops going to Court and instead they all three roam through the fields, amongst the shades and ghosts who have found peace. They lay in the tall grasses for hours at a time, long enough that Ronan can very nearly hypnotize himself into believing he feels the sun’s warmth upon his skin. 

At night, he and Adam lay side by side and do not touch. 

Gansey grows less substantial with each passing day, a little more colorless, a little more vacant-eyed. Ronan begs for stories because that is the only time that Gansey looks the way he did when he first appeared in Court. Gansey tells him about slaying the minotaur, about the girl he’d met in the maze,  _ Blue  _ and her great ball of thread. Gansey tells him about Blue endlessly; he and Noah close their eyes and imagine being Aboveground, chasing down mysteries and completing quests like Gansey describes. 

 

***

 

Adam allows him to abscond during the day with Noah and Gansey for so long without complaint that it is a surprise when one of the fleet-footed demons comes bearing a summons from  _ the King himself.  _

Ronan arrives in the throne room prepared for an argument, a fight to end this standstill more tortuous than anything else has been in all his time Belowground. 

There is no fight waiting for him, only Adam and a line of starved-looking wastrel shades and  _ Henry.  _

“Henry!” He calls out, all surprise and delight. He and Henry had never been particularly close, but everyone knew the messenger god. 

He’s never seen Henry look so particularly downcast, though, he realizes as he gets within back-slapping distance. The shades are so malnourished that their eyes cannot even focus. Adam looks grim. 

“What the hell is going on?” Ronan asks, looking from face to face in confusion. 

“Dude,” Henry says, serious. “Your mom is fucking  _ pissed.”  _

 

***

 

Long after Henry leaves and Adam sends the shades somewhere to recuperate, Ronan and Adam sit in their side-by-side thrones, silent and contemplative. Neither of them wants to be the one to break the silence, and who can blame them? What is there to  _ say?  _ They’d been caught in stony anger for weeks now, wasting time because they thought they had so much of it. A year had seemed like a century, stretching out before them, but now there is an ultimatum like an axe hanging above their heads. 

He’s just resolved to break the silence when Adam beats him to it, speaking in carefully-measured metre. 

“Ronan, what would you have me do?” It’s an honest question, a fair question, and Ronan does not answer right away out of respect for the seriousness in Adam’s tone, his eyes, the set of his hands carefully laid upon the arms of his jagged seat. He looks around the great throne room and notes that the figures he once mistook for violent are actually displayed in sensual twists all around, all bodies pressing in close together, a testament to  _ life,  _ not death. He thinks of Adam, dark-eyed and  _ longing  _ but so gentle. He thinks of the sunlight he has missed more than he thought possible, for something he had taken so for granted. 

Ronan steels himself, resolute. Opens his mouth to answer and

…is interrupted by the towering doors being flung open, and a small figure darting inside. 

A small figure who practically  _ reeks  _ of sunshine and plants and  _ Aboveground,  _ a small figure who at first Ronan thinks is a  _ child  _ but realizes is just a very short woman, a small figure who is most definitely  _ alive.  _

“I am Blue!” She announces, her voice ringing out mightily from such a small frame. The room being empty certainly amplifies the echo, Ronan notes clinically, tilting his head in unwilling fascination as she sets her hands upon her hips. “And I have come to claim my true love from you, King of Hell!” 

Ronan gives her points for dramatics at least, and hides his smile behind his hand. 

 

***

 

Gansey  _ brightens  _ as soon as he is in the same room as Blue. Ronan watches it with a tightening in his chest, something painful trying to crawl its way up his throat. Gansey brightens and the flush returns to his cheeks as if she is the sun and he is reflecting her light back, and Ronan is  _ undone  _ just at the thought. Poetic nonsense, he knows, but he cannot look away from their reunion. 

“Adam,” he whispers urgently. “Adam, Adam, I surrender to your will.” 

Adam goes perfectly, completely still, staring at him incredulously. For all that he had bound Ronan with the Old Ways at the beginning of their stint as faux-partners, he hadn’t ever expected Ronan to yield in a way so binding and final. And this is binding and final- he has said Adam’s name thrice and spoken a vow, and now Ronan has handed over his freedom willingly to Adam. For a price. 

“Under one condition.” He continues, and Adam’s face closes off, no doubt expecting the worst. 

“Name it,” Adam replies, low and harsh,  _ waiting,  _ and Ronan knows this is a bad idea. 

He knows, but he cannot stop himself. 

“You’ll let Gansey return with Blue. You’ll grant him back his life. No strings attached.” Ronan murmurs, and from Adam’s staggered expression he clearly didn’t expect  _ that.  _

“It shall be done.” Adam says, lips barely moving, and then he does not look at Ronan again the entire evening. 

 

***

 

“What do you want, Adam?” Ronan asks when they get back to their room, which had been cleaned and refurbished so deftly by the demons Noah sent that Ronan himself could hardly tell that it had ever been anything but the way it is now. 

“Damn you, _ ”  _ Adam murmurs. He won’t look at Ronan. Ronan feels colder than he ever has before, without the warmth of Adam’s gaze. “Ronan. I want you to  _ stay.”   _ He speaks like a desperate man; he speaks like the sort of man who might abduct a groom from a meadow, like the sort of man whose kisses were more searing than the fires of the hottest forge. Like the man Ronan has always suspected he was, beneath his cool daytime exterior. Beneath the  _ king  _ lies a  _ man,  _ and Ronan loves them both. 

“Then  _ keep me!” _ Ronan all but shouts it back, gut twisting in despair. “I surrendered myself to you!” Because he loves Adam, and he loves the cool darkness of the Underworld, and he loves Noah, and he  _ loves Adam.  _

(But he loves the sun, too, and his brothers, his  _ mother,  _ the springtime, the baby animals. He loves it all  _ too.)  _

“Ronan, that is not the same  _ thing!”  _ Adam exclaims, full of exasperated grief. “I can’t- you are not a  _ thing  _ to be  _ given away!”  _ And it’s cutting, the way Adam speaks. The way he dismisses what Ronan has given him, as if it were some passing fancy that brought him to such a decision. 

“Adam-” he starts, reaching out his hand. He’s both shocked and  _ not  _ when Adam twists away from him, staring at the far wall and studiously  _ not  _ anywhere near Ronan. 

“Go,” Adam says, with all the restraint of a being who knows he can have whatever he wants. Ronan knows that if he wanted, Adam could  _ keep him.  _ He could lock Ronan away and say  _ I am not giving him back.  _

He  _ could.  _

But, Ronan realizes with rising joy and dawning despair, he won’t. Because he loves Ronan. 

_ Loves.  _ Finally, there is someone who  _ loves  _ him, and Ronan has to  _ leave.  _ It’s a fucking tragedy. 

“Ronan.  _ Please.  _ Go.” Adam says again, strained, and so Ronan leaves the bedroom they’ve shared a year’s worth of nights without looking back. 

He hears glass shattering, fabric ripping, Adam  _ roaring _ , and then nothing at all. 

 

***

 

Declan and Matthew are waiting for him on the other side of the river, both wary and hungry-eyed,  _ waiting.  _

Despite himself, Ronan is glad to see them. Matthew’s arms are just as feverishly warm as ever when he flings them around Ronan, and Declan’s hand is a cool, reassuring presence on his back. 

“Are you ready to go?” Declan asks, his voice strange. Ronan finds himself looking up from where he’d buried his face in Matty’s golden curls. Declan’s face is smoothed out, carefully blank like his words. “You didn’t eat anything down here, did you? You know that if you eat anything in the Underworld, you can never leave.” A thread current of urgency bleeds into his tone. Ronan blinks, sure that he is misunderstanding. “Ronan. Did you eat anything?” Declan presses him.  _ Ronan. Focus,  _ his eyes demand. 

“I forgot something.” Ronan says, copying his older brother’s tone. “I have to go get it.” 

Declan nods once, firmly. His eyes promise forgiveness. He draws Matthew back to his side. “Hurry.” He says. 

 

***

 

The pomegranates on the table in the Hall are as luscious as ever, split into perfect halves. Their seeds spill out like glittering rubies. Ronan stares at them, thinking. 

He loves Adam. He loves the Underworld. He loves being at Adam’s side. 

He loves his family. He loves the sunlight, the meadows, the Aboveground. He loves welcoming the spring, standing midwife to the animals and greeting the new blooms. 

How can he decide? How can he  _ choose?  _

…  _ Why _ does he have to choose? 

 

***

 

“You’re a mad thing,” Adam whispers against his lips, helpless with Ronan wrapped entirely around him like a fur stole.  _ “Wild.”  _

“Feral,” Ronan agrees, smugly, grinning so that their teeth clack when they kiss. The six pomegranate seeds have filled him up more than an entire roast boar Aboveground would’ve. 

Six months Above and six months Below; what a bargain. 

What a  _ life  _ they will lead. 

“I love you,” Adam murmurs, twining his fingers into the back of Ronan’s tunic, using it as a handhold to draw him closer and closer and closer, still. 

“Prove it, my king,” Ronan whispers back, and captures his lips again in a searing kiss. 

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me @ brophigenia.tumblr.com


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